Those "do not eat" desiccate packets of silica gel that keep shoe boxes dry could soon help keep data centers cool. IBM has launched the THRIVE project with aims to do just that by creating a heat pump that runs on waste heat.

Last week Chrysler quietly released a software update for its optional Uconnect in-car entertainment system. And while the official purpose was "to improve vehicle electronic security", Wired reports that the patch is really aimed at fixing a terrifying flaw in the system's security. One that could allow hackers to remotely shut down your vehicle at slow speeds or hijack its steering, brakes, and transmission.

Graphene seems to be the new millennium's wonder material: it can be used to build more powerful processors, more efficient solar cells, better sounding headphones and, apparently, can even be deep-fried to create long-lasting batteries. Now, researchers at Rice University think that a "3D" variant of the material could change the way we cool our gadgets.

Clinical depression is the kind of ailment that can sneak up on you, ruin your attitude, destroy motivation and lead to a multitude of other mental health issues. It can be managed if you're aware of it, but a lot of depression goes undiagnosed. It doesn't have to be that way--researchers think that smartphones could one day serve as an early-warning system by passively monitoring your behavior.

It doesn't take a whole lot to stop the tiny air sacs in your lungs from doing their jobs -- trauma, a nasty case of pneumonia or sepsis could lead to what's called Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, a situation in which your blood doesn't get all the oxygen it should. ARDS can be tricky to treat even on a good day, but that's where the big brains at the University of Michigan come in. Researchers there have cooked up a way to model how liquid medication surges and diffuses throughout the lungs, and breathed new life into a treatment that others had all but given up on in the process.

Phones, tablets and other devices slow down over time, no matter how expensive or cutting edge they were when you bought them. Now, researchers from Hanyang University in Korea claim a technology they developed can delay the inevitable. It's called Where's WALDIO or Write Ahead Logging Direct IO, and according to team leader Professor You-jip Won, it's a mode that extends battery life and speeds up phones by minimizing the amount of data a device records. "The core of the newly-developed technology is to record a small amount of data," Won said. "This tech will make it possible to use low-priced flash memory for a long time, like expensive flash memory."

Who here uses Street View to do some virtual traveling? It's not a shabby option if you want to look at places you might never visit within your lifetime, but Google thinks there's still a better way to simulate real-world tours. A team of the company's researchers has developed a technique that uses Google's experimental machine vision algorithm called DeepStereo to transform Street View panoramas into seamless virtual tours. See, Street View photos don't usually capture every detail of a location -- there are always a few frames missing in order to construct convincing digital reproductions of places like museums and houses. DeepStereo can synthesize those missing frames based on the ones that go before and after them, giving Google the ability to create realistic virtual tours.

See that teensy Tinkerbell-shaped light above? That's not CGI -- that's a real floating display, and it's completely touchable too. Mid-air plasma displays aren't that prolific yet, but they're not exactly new either. However, floating lights created using existing techniques can usually burn skin, since every "voxel" (a pixel in 3D space) is made by heating molecules with nanosecond lasers. In order to make them safe to touch, a team of researchers from the University of Tsukuba, Utsunomiya University, Nagoya Institute of Technology and the University of Tokyo, used lasers that fire bursts of plasma every few femtoseconds instead.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a robotic cockroach that can crawl through the tightest of gaps. The team began by studying actual cockroaches, observing how they moved through the densely packed rainforest floor. While some obstacles are pushed past or climbed over, the cockroaches frequently rolled their body at an almost-90-degree angle to scamper through openings. The next step was to fit these real-world 'roaches with artificial shells and see how this aided or hampered their mobility. The result was perhaps obvious: the less cylindrical the shell, the less effective the insects were at performing the roll manoeuvre.

A number of companies have developed photo software for facial recognition, but what happens when your face is partially hidden? What if it's completely covered up? Facebook's artificial intelligence lab developed an algorithm that remedies the issue by picking out folks with other clues. Instead of using facial features, the software can identify people using things like hair style, pose, clothing and body type. Of course, a tool like this could lend a hand in a photo app like Facebook Moments or even Google's revamped Photos software. However, it also raises privacy questions when you can be identified in a snapshot even if your face is concealed, especially if you're trying to remain hidden on purpose. Facebook's algorithm is pretty good too, identifying people with an 83 percent success rate in tests, so we'll be curious to see if it makes its way into the social network's photo galleries in the future.

Solar cells have always been inspired by photosynthesis, so it's only natural for researchers to take cues from different aspects of the energy-making process. A team of UCLA chemists, for instance, have developed a way that will allow solar cells to keep their charge for weeks instead of just a few seconds like current products are capable of. According to Sarah Tolbert, UCLA chem professor and one of the study's authors, they looked into plants' nanoscale structures that can keep negatively charged molecules separated from positively charged ones. "That separation is the key to making the process so efficient," she said.

Lithium-based batteries' tendency to overheat and catch fire has been keeping back the development of promising new technologies. In particular, it's been affecting R&D of lithium-sulfur and lithium-air batteries, both of which are much lighter than current options and can store 10 times more energy. Thankfully, a group of Stanford researchers has discovered a way to make them a lot safer. See, batteries based on the metal usually short out or randomly burst into flames due to dendrites or finger-like growths of lithium. These dendrites start forming once the electrode starts to break down, elongating more and more as time goes by, until they pierce the barrier separating the anode from the cathode (as pictured above.)

CNN already announced its intent to make drones part of news coverage. It's not the only media outlet looking to leverage the UAVs, though, as a group of 15 other companies are partnering with Virginia Tech to conduct trials of their own. The university's facility in Bealeton, Virginia is one of the FAA's approved test sites outside of Washington, DC. The group of media companies includes the Associated Press, Getty Images, Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Gannett (USA Today) NBCUniversal, Univision and others. The group worked with the National Press Photographers Association to create guidelines for the trials. "The research testing we are initiating will provide the news media coalition a safe and innovative way to gather and disseminate information and keep journalists out of harm's way," said Rose Mooney, executive director of the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership. The testing began today and will examine the use of drones for various settings, including both remote and urban locations.

Wireless electricity transmission sounds... dangerous, but the ability to do it could transform the internet of things. Researchers from the University of Washington have charged a JawBone UP24 fitness tracker with nothing but ordinary WiFi. They noticed that regular, ambient WiFi was strong enough to power a variety of tiny devices, but only in micro-bursts. So, they inserted "noise" into the signals to keep the power levels steady without disrupting data transmission. Using the technique, which they dubbed "PoWi-Fi" (we vote for just "Pow-Fi") they ran a low-power surveillance camera and temperature sensor from up to 6 meters (20 feet) away from the WiFi antenna.

Seals with sensors have been roaming Antarctica's seas for over a decade and the trove of data they gathered is now available to scientists across the world. The research, conducted by an 11-nation consortium called Marine Mammals exploring the Oceans Pole-to-Pole (MEOP), was designed to see how climate change affects sensitive oceans in the region. The sensors record position, sea pressure, temperature and salinity data as the animals dive up to 60 times a day to depths of 7,000 feet. Since 2004, they've gathered more than 300,000 environmental profiles of the sea.

When you need to move something but it's too heavy to lift off the ground, most of us default to one of two strategies: find someone stronger, or shove it along the floor instead. Researchers from the University of Tokyo's JSK Laboratory are now teaching robots to do the latter. The latest version of its HRP-2 is able to analyse an object, say a heavy crate on tiny rollers, and try different methods of exerting force. Much like a human, lower force strategies mean pushing or pulling with its hands, while higher strength methods include leaning in with a single shoulder or its back. The robot will monitor each attempt and automatically switch to increasingly higher force strategies if it finds the object still isn't moving. Depending on its progress, the HRP-2 will also alter its footwork to ensure it doesn't fall over; a slow-moving object might require shorter steps, for instance, to make sure it's not caught off guard by a sudden change in resistance. It can't replace your local moving company (yet), but it's nice to see a robot finally putting its back into something.

The human race is doomed, and it's all our own fault. With the quantity of carbon in our atmosphere now well beyond the safe limit, it's almost certain the planet's temperature will continue to rise. Climate change is causing natural disasters of biblical proportions; a situation that's only going to get worse as time progresses. We all need to work harder to improve this situation by using less energy and behaving more responsibly. But since some people will never be convinced the Earth's rapidly approaching the end of its humanity-hospitable era, we're now in dire need of alternative options to save us from ourselves. To help get the word out, we've compiled a list of some of the most exciting scientific projects we've seen of late that could, if successful, undo some or all of the damage we've caused.

The test flight of Carl Sagan's LightSail craft is in jeopardy after a computer problem left it unable to communicate with its mission controllers. According to the Planetary Society, the hardware was launched into space with an older version of its Linux-based operating system, which shipped with a serious glitch. As the vehicle circuits the planet, it's meant to send back a packet of data, but over the first two days, this file grew too big for the system to handle. As such, it crashed, although we mean that in the software sense, rather than the coming-back-to-Earth-with-a-bump sense.

What a person does on their phone call tell you a lot about them -- including their GPA. Researchers from Dartmouth College and the University of Texas at Austin have developed an app that tracks smartphone activity to compute a grade point average that's within 0.17 of a point. The software is called smartGPA and using it alongside "periodic self reports" keeps tabs on how hard a student is studying and partying -- on top of physical activity, sleep, attendance and social interactions. Members of the research team were also responsible for the StudentLife app that kept up with mental health and its effect on grades, and this goes a step further by taking into account a broader picture of daily life. "We show that there are a number of important behavioral factors automatically inferred from smartphones that significantly correlate with term and cumulative GPA," the study explains. Installing the app, which is built with cloud and machine learning algorithms, monitored a group of undergrads 24 hours a day for 10 weeks.

Gaming has well known dark sides, but it can also improve spatial skills, reduce stress and even bring families together. Two new studies may further confuse you about the benefits, with one concluding that gaming makes you friendlier in the real world, and another implying it could ruin your brain. First the plus side: Texas Tech researchers think that cooperative gameplay, whether in violent or non-violent games, makes people nicer. "We found that playing with a helpful partner increases the expectation of others to reciprocate that pro-social behavior," said author John Velez. He added that teaming up even makes you "nicer to the other team... that just tried to beat you."

Here's one type of biometric authentication you might not have heard of before: using your brain's response to words as your personal identification. Blair Armstrong and his team of researchers from the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language in Spain observed the brain signals of 45 subjects while they read a list of 45 acronyms, such as FBI and DVD. According to New Scientist, they found that the volunteers' brains reacted differently to each one, enough for the system to pinpoint their identities with 94 percent accuracy.

The European Commission (EC) has finally confirmed what we've all known for years: if you shut down one online piracy site, another will simply take its place. A report published by the EC's Joint Research Center found that the closure of Kino.to, a popular unlicensed streaming site in Germany, had little impact on national online piracy. The team analysed the web activity of 5,000 German citizens, and found that while there was a sharp decline in June 2011, when the site was pulled offline by officials, average piracy levels quickly returned to normal. In addition, researchers concluded that Kino.to's demise did little to encourage licensed alternatives. Instead, a group of new illegal streaming sites rose to prominence -- kinox.to, mega-stream.to, video2k.tv and streams.to, among others.

The standard line about solar power is that while good in theory, the technology just isn't there to keep our lights on and our Netflix streaming. But a new study from MIT (PDF) suggests that's not the case. According to the massive report (an epic 356 pages) current crystalline silicon photovoltaic technology is capable of delivering terawatt-scale power by 2050. That would be many times larger than Topaz facility California that generates 550 megawatts. While there is certainly room for improvement in efficiency, the MIT study says that the biggest hurdle isn't tech, it's investment. The authors called out the lack of funding for research and development, but focused more on poor governmental policies. Subsidies generally go to other energy sources, like oil and natural gas, and trade policies set by the federal government have driven up prices by restricting imports of cheaper solar parts in order to boost domestic production.

Forget those teensy deep-sea submersibles cradling crews of brave scientists -- the future of underwater exploration might be led by robots that can do their own thing. MIT engineers, led by professor Brian Williams, cooked up a system that lets autonomous underwater drones figure out and act on the nitty-gritty details of their missions without the need for meticulously laid-out plans.

A team of researchers from Yahoo Labs has developed a much affordable alternative to fingerprint sensors for phones. It's a biometric system called "Bodyprint," and it only needs devices' capacitive touchscreen displays to authenticate body parts. Since displays have lower input resolution compared to specialized sensors, the system requires you to use larger parts of your body. It can recognize your ear, fist, phalanges, set of five fingers and your palm -- simply press any of them on the screen for access. In addition to serving as your phone's gatekeeper, it has a number of other potential applications, as well.